The Dirt on America's New Super-Embassy in Iraq

The new United States Embassy rises above Baghdad—one of the only projects in Iraq being completed within budget and on time. *Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images.*At the dedication ceremony of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the current American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, hailed the massive, heavily fortified structure as a monument to a new era of diplomacy between the two countries. "No period has been more intense," he said, "more challenging or more promising than that since April 2003. And of that period, perhaps no single week has been more important than this past one." Visiting the construction site over a year ago, however, our international correspondent William Langewiesche saw the $600 million building as a colossal symbol of the United States's disconnection from Iraq, a safe but isolated enclave of American suburbia—complete with a food court, movie theater, swimming pool, and tennis courts—within the Green Zone. Click here to take a virtual tour of "The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad," currently the biggest embassy in the world.